Tax Cut Lunacy

[papau]

homage to 41's now-antiquated commitment to keeping "some balance" between what the government spends and what it raises in taxes.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/06/AR2006020601257.html

Tax Cut Lunacy

By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Tuesday, February 7, 2006; Page A21

The roots of our fiscal madness, on display once again yesterday with the unveiling of President Bush's new budget and its deficit in excess of $350 billion, were planted on Oct. 27, 1990.

Ironically, that's the day when the first President Bush embraced the last genuinely bipartisan budget reduction package to include both tax increases and spending cuts.

It can be seen in retrospect as one of Bush 41's admirable long-term achievements. (Another, of course, was his success in driving Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait.) In tandem with Bill Clinton's tax increases three years later, the 1990 agreement set off a decade of fiscal responsibility and exceptional economic growth.

But Bush 41 could not embrace his budget victory as a triumph, because the agreement split his party and because he had won election just two years earlier promising "no new taxes." So he backed away from his achievement as soon as it was in hand.<snip>

[Demeter]

1. Bush 1 Success Was Driving Carter Out and Quashing Iran/Contra

everything else was not worth mentioning.

[barb162]

2. the bullshit started with Reagan and supply-side economics

The jagoff economics guy he had, Stockman, later actually admitted it didn't work, that trickle down doesn't work. Well that was fucking obvious. So Bush1 and then Bush2 resurrect it and the American public buys into it again. GULLIBLE and STUPID. No matter in how many ways Bush cuts benefits at the expense of the the average and poor Americans and gives tax breaks to the rich, they have voted for him twice now. It amazes me, it astounds me.